Dim dwarfs

DIM dwarf stars could account for much of our Galaxy's supposedly "dark" matter.

The Galaxy is thought to harbour lots of matter we can't see, either as ordinary matter in some invisible form, or as exotic particles new to physics.

Now Ben Oppenheimer of the University of California at Berkeley says nearly all of that ordinary dark matter could be white dwarf stars. His team spotted a host of faint white dwarfs, and says they could account for between 3 and 35 per cent of the total mystery mass. The results will appear in a future issue of Science.

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